During my morning walk, passing through a wooded lane and out into former cotton/soybean/corn fields where I used to fly remote-controlled airplanes in winter, down the country road not far from old horse and emu farms turned into suburban tracts, the concrete slabs of sidewalk held bird droppings, algae, hardened footprints of a small dog and the label for a Sears brand lawnmower.
At six in the morning, cars and trucks rolled past, their occupants hidden from view.
Low clouds hung in the air as if to say, “We could have been fog if the air had been colder and more humid.”
Walking for 35 minutes, I met no other person walking or running. I saw one jogger off in the distance.
I was left to my thoughts, the early morning haze of dim dreams and leftover conversational thought trails.
Have you ever been overcome by smoke? Perhaps a campfire, a house on fire or chemical fogging?
Lack of sleep for months and years have turned me into a murky-minded zombie of sorts.
While people are dying while playing out their version of the Boston Massacre in Egyptian cities, I have the luxury of complaining about the lack of sleep.
Not a complaint, really.
Merely an observation about a snoring wife and cats who like to play musical chairs with beds and sofas at night.
After the walk, I returned home, kissed my wife on her way to work and showered, sitting down at my work desk, thinking about a friend who counseled my family during my father’s last days and penned the following note:
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
After faith in Jesus Christ and loyalty to family and to church, I hold two other things dear — my memory and my integrity. Recent events have made me question the first, but I hope my integrity remains intact. Therefore I feel I must tell you what is going on with me.
Recently I have had several occasions where I have forgotten a meeting or forgotten to do something very important in the context of my ministry. Because of those two episodes, during my annual physical, I ask my physician to perform a mental acuity test. For the most part I passed with flying colors, but there was one glitch which “might” indicate something else is going on. My doctor is taking a “wait and see” attitude for this one.
Also as a part of the physical I was given several tests to measure depression and it was determined that I was “mildly clinically depressed.” My physician has elected for now to treat the depression without drugs; however, he feels, and I concur, that probably both my forgetfulness and my depression is the result of stress.
One bout of extreme stress when I was first called to Colonial Heights resulted in a series of physical events which could have been quite serious and still require medication. I hope this helps you understand why this current battle with stress must be taken very seriously.
My physician has written to Session with a prescription that I take a mandatory three weeks away from ministry; no worship preparation, no sermons, no classes, no visitation, no funerals, no phone calls, etc. Quite honestly admitting to you and to myself that I have “hit the wall” with my stress levels at first produced even more stress than before; however one must “name the demon” if one is to get well. So here I am naming my demon and his/her/their name is stress. Now that I have actually named it “out loud” I feel a good bit better.
After talking with Session and staff I will be “away” and unavailable from July 29 through August 18. The only exceptions are two promised events one on July 30 and another on August 2. In the past I have never taken all my vacation/study leave/sabbatical time which may be why I am having this problem now. I still have vacation and study leave time as well as having never taken more than 4-5 days of sick leave in almost 10 years, so time away is not an issue.
Please, please do NOT allow my problem to cause any of you worry or consternation. While this can be serious, it is not life threatening, and with God’s help I will recover. I plan to be fully functioning in a few weeks and God willing, plan to continue to serve Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church for several years to come. Your prayers are always appreciated.
Yours in Christ, Tom
Tom had given his time unselfishly both while my father lay dying and after my father’s death so naturally there is a permanent bond between us just as there is a permanent bond to the man who married me to my wife.
I cracked open the Bible (Revised Standard Version) given to me by the Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church on September 26th, 1971, signed by the church pastor at the time, H. Reid Montgomery — nothing like having a real Scotsman for your Presbyterian minister to impress you as a child growing up in the church.
I immediately turned to the 23rd Psalm:
1 A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; 2 he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
With that in my conscious thoughts, I wrote a letter of sympathy to Tom, asking him to let his stress-based depression be a gift rather than a burden.
During my walk and while writing, in my thoughts were remnants of a conversation last night between my wife, Guin and myself and a subsequent conversation between my wife and me about the previous conversation with Guin.
From an early age, I knew I was a socially-dependent person.
Even though my sister was a rival for my parents’ love, she was also a good companion to have because she followed me around and would do anything her big brother would.
She was a litmus test for my curiosity and courage.
When I was a teenager, I intercepted a note between a boy and girl in band class. The boy said I was in love with her and the girl wrote back that it was no big deal because I would fall in love with anything and anyone, even a piece of shit.
I knew what she meant. I have no filter for my love, accepting people for whomever they say they are or want to be, willing to overcome my subcultural conditioning and ignorance to determine their needs, helping to the best of my limited abilities.
As a person by myself, I have no needs, wants or expensive hobbies. I have been happy for many years now spending most of the day at home without human contact, writing books, coining journal/blog entries (often in response to online news/comments) and piddling around in the yard/garage.
However, should a person come to the door, I’m like an eager dog wagging his tail, desirous of conversation and face-to-face body language communication.
My codependent tendencies, my desire to please others, has not been completely detrimental to my health but it has caused problems, such as when, through rewards and encouragement from coworkers and upper management, I would give my all to a company objective only to miss the fact that the company no longer needed my department, laying off my employees but keeping me, giving me headache-inducing survivor’s guilt.
My hearing loss and blinding headaches in the last few years have, according to my wife, affected my memory, just like Tom.
For me, the question of whether being a virtual caged animal in a marriage of diminishing returns (i.e., if marriage is a protective nest for procreation, what happens when the chances for offspring approach nil?) is par for the course for my personality traits and/or not healthy/normal has not been answered despite marriage counseling and psychologist/psychiatrist sessions back in the 1990s.
My wife told me it has not gone unnoticed that when she, Guin and I are in conversation, Guin and I tend to mimic each other’s movements, as if Guin and I are two codependent personalities feeding off each other.
Guin is about the same height as my sister, with very similar body features — brown hair and medium athletic build.
She is athletic like my sister, like I thought my wife was when we got married, who went camping and hiking with me for several years before she admitted she’d rather stay at a hotel or B&B in the mountains than hike to a mountaintop and sleep in a bag on hard ground, her clothes and hair smelling badly like campfire smoke on the way back to our house late Sunday evenings, requiring a late-night shower instead of much-needed sleep. I admit that I hike less than I used to, replacing hikes with suburban walks/jogs, like substituting cotton candy for nutritious fruits and veggies.
Because my memory loss has increased, I have fully adopted the writer’s slogan, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Or better yet, maybe a fake quote by Mark Twain would apply better here: “During my recent European excursion, I spoke to a man named Freud who was convinced that all of man’s thoughts and actions are based on sex. He’s obviously never met Mrs. Twain.”
In any case, my wife says that I have gotten into the habit of making up what she said to me, wishing she had access to a voice recorder that could play back what she really said in a conversation versus what I twisted and reworked into a personally-entertaining blog entry or short story.
So, what is the truth? Why do I enjoy dancing with Guin in ways unimaginable with my wife? In Mars’ gravity, for instance.
Is it simply the recognition of a similar thought set in another person, eager to let thoughts and ideas take off exponentially/logarithmically as if there is no tomorrow because after you’ve been in a life-threatening automobile smashup and seen Death, shaking his cold hand and smelling his bad breath, you embrace life because you know there is no promise for a tomorrow on this planet?
Is that why I have a burning desire to see myself in writing at least once day, virtually screaming to the world “I’m not dead yet!”
Would I dance every night until they turn off the lights if I had the chance?
Would dancing for hours completely flatten out my feet like marathon training/running used to do?
If there is no tomorrow, hadn’t I better answer these questions today?
treetrunkdings 